


Tea and Empathy

by Nadia_Hernandez



Category: Charmed (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Tea, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-29
Updated: 2019-01-29
Packaged: 2019-10-18 16:27:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17584328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nadia_Hernandez/pseuds/Nadia_Hernandez
Summary: Sometimes all you need is a little tea and empathy. A final scene remix, rewrite--whatever you want to call it.





	Tea and Empathy

She doesn’t strictly speaking push past Charity with the tray of tea and lemons but it’s certainly more authoritative than just brushing past her, too. It’s a bold move, strong, and doesn’t feel to Macy quite like the woman she was yesterday but, well… that woman had not stared into an open portal to hell and watched her sister and friend (friend?) limp out of it.

“He needs a friend right now, not someone who would have left him to rot,” she says, “and most of all he needs some tea. He is British, after all… I think they even use it in cardiac arrest instead of epi.”

“A cup of tea and half a grain of morphine,” Maggie says. “It’s what the doctors used to give wounded Tommies back in World War One.” When they all stare at her in puzzlement she shrugs. “What, I can’t pay attention in history class? It’s interesting… and besides, I get to sorta fantasize about nursing some cute, wounded soldier back to health and yumminess.” 

It is good, Macy thinks, to see some of her old spirit sparking under that wan shell. The marks of her ordeal are written on her wrist in dark, twisted veins but are not, thank any gods or goddesses that might be, cut there too deeply.

Charity does not reply. She had provided a paint can for them, even if it was Harbinger free, but she had also described the mission as being “low-priority.” She has the decency to look ashamed as she stands aside although she looks, for an instant, as if she would like to make an issue of it. Macy knows that she has certainly been brusque, on just this side of rude.

She stands down. It might be that she is thinking that these strong-willed women are her responsibility and that to wrangle them takes finesse more than brute strength, or even that the good grace and cooperation of the Charmed Ones is more important than the ego of any single Elder. Confrontation is avoided for the moment, although it still brews certainly on Mel’s face at least, and Macy carries on with her commitment.

Harry is slumped on the couch, leaned over against an overstuffed arm. He is pale--paler than usual at least--and livid bags hang under his eyes. Hell has processed him just a trifle more thoroughly than it has Maggie and written the anguish of decades in the darkness crawling through his veins. They twist and weave across the hint of his forearms that she can see beneath a fluffy blanket and pulse in his throat purple against almost ivory skin.

She forces a smile. “So, uh, hey. Hey. How ya doing?”

He frowns. “Is it really that bad?”

“No!” she says and feigns surprise. “What ever gave you that idea?”

“Apart from that I feel acutely as if I had been broken on the wheel and quartered?” he asks. “It’s your face.”

She furrows her brow. “What’s wrong with my face?”

“Nothing, in general,” he says, “or very little at least. In fact it’s a rather good face, especially when you wear that little worried expression that is on it currently, but don’t forget that I have almost a century of intense White Lighter training. It’s only natural that I can tell what’s on your mind.”

“And that is?”

“That I look like I’ve been broken on the wheel and quartered.”

She sits beside him and places her tea tray on the coffee table. It is a dark wood, mahogany, maybe, and matches the rich, leather furniture well. “I don’t know if you and Maggie rubbed off on each other while you were cellmates like some weird prison gang thing or if you both just have superbly screwed up senses of humor.”

“I’m sorry?”

“She’s in the other room babbling about nursing some cute soldier back to health and you’ve developed a keen fixation on medieval torture.”

“Ah,” he says. “She has been paying attention in her history class. I knew that a picture of Wilfred Owen might catch her eye. A pity that he’s been dead for a hundred years.”

“Well, there’s always necromancy,” Macy says. “Now, I know that you normally take your tea with a squeeze of lemon and no sugar but, in light of what’s happened…” She lets the thought trail off.

“Come now,” he says. “Just because I have been--literally--through hell in the last bit does not mean that I am willing to drink the lemon flavored syrup that you call tea. I need fortification, not diabetes.”

She giggled. “All right, all right. You know best--about tea, at least.” She poured for him, then herself. Steam curled from the cups and she found herself, almost absently, lay her head against his shoulder. It had seemed like such a comfortable place for reasons she could not fathom and perhaps this was for a reason of its own. She had not made the decision to rest there, after all, in the rational centers of her mind.  
He felt good beneath her--well muscled but not large, a lithe man with soft skin that smelled of cinnamon, sandalwood and myrrh. It was a good smell, one that made her feel comfortable. The scientist in her knew that it was probably just the fact that those smells approximated that of adosterone but a wry, contrary Macy living deep inside could beg to differ. 

After a long, languid moment she says, without moving, “It’s funny… I came in here to support you and here you are literally supporting me. It’s just what you do for me and my sisters without hesitating, without even thinking.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Don’t worry about it,” she says. “I’m rambling. It’s just… when Maggie got thrown into the pit with you, you did everything you could to protect her--almost died for her, in fact. And now that it’s all over, when I should be comforting you, you’re comforting me.”

“Having the head of a beautiful woman on my shoulder is hardly a lack of comfort,” he says. His voice seems huskier but that might just be all the sulfur that he’s inhaled. 

She shifts her head against him a trifle. “Beautiful?” 

“Obviously.” It’s a topic that does not seem elegant at this juncture and so they both press past it. “From what I saw there, what the dragon showed me, I ill deserve to be cared for by women as remarkable as you, Melanie and Maggie at all.”

“That’s nonsense.”

“Is it? I was a bandit, a desperate man who robbed and killed for his own gain, whose own son died for those sins. My life was as worthless as that of a roach or bacterium.”

“Those had to be lies,” she says. “Demons lie. It’s what they do.” Coming from a woman who, until recently, would have scoffed at the very concept of demons even existing this seems like a peculiarly absolutist statement but, well.. Macy has decided to ride this nervous breakdown and see where it takes her.

“They tell the truth, too, on occasion,” he says. “Whatever will hurt you more--that’s the hell of it, that I don’t even know. Whatever will hurt you more.” He sighs. “I suppose that’s what makes them demons.”

“That and being nonhuman disincarnate beings,” she says.

“That too.” He chuckles. It’s the first time she’s heard even a hint of mirth from him since the return. “Whatever hurts more… I fear that it is the truth--I fear it. It has a ring of truth and truth cuts so much deeper than a lie.”

“Whatever, dude,” Macy says. “Listen… it doesn’t matter”

His furrowed brow mirrors hers from earlier. “What do you mean?”

“However you used to roll with your crew, or do crimes or, whatever… it doesn’t matter. That’s not you, not the Harry that you are. I mean, would the man who did all that have just jumped up and told a dragon--an actual no-shit fire breathing dragon--to put all of that pain on him instead of on my baby sister? I don’t think so.”

“I suppose that you are right.”

“Damn straight I am,” she says. “I’m very, very smart, you know--I’m right about a lot of things.”

“Oh dear… I believe that Melanie is rubbing off on you.”

She shrugs. “I can think of worse people to rub off on me.”

“And I can drink to that,” he says. They do, gently tipping tea cups so that hot liquid does not escape, and return to the easy company of gentle breathing and warm bodies. Tea and empathy make on hell of a pair.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been loving this season so far--so more than I thought I would--and even though I liked seeing a more human side to Charity (although as an original Charmed lover from my middle school days I aint nevah gonna trust an Elder all the way) I thought that might be a good moment to do some relationship building.


End file.
